


Heart of the Sea and Flesh of the Ocean

by Pollys_hymnia



Series: Elrond's Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology [4]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Bad middle earth cryptids, But squid?, Crack, Cryptids, Cír-kraken, Círdan is a kraken, Círdan is a squid man, Círdan the Kraken eats Numenoreans, Gen, Guess it wasn't all Ossë's fault after all, Not crabs, Sorry Not Sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 03:47:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pollys_hymnia/pseuds/Pollys_hymnia
Summary: Círdan begins to undergo a strange transformation—he grows a beard.  But it doesn't stop there.





	Heart of the Sea and Flesh of the Ocean

It had begun sometime after the departure of Tol Eressëa.  Círdan had longed to accompany his kin to Valinor, but at Ulmo’s bidding he had remained behind.  So he established himself a home beside the sea instead.  When he wasn’t busy with his ships, he grew accustomed to spending long spans of time walking along the beach and swimming in the water.

Gradually, year by year, he would swim further.  He would swim longer, and it became harder and harder to convince himself to return home.  Sometimes he wondered if it were possible to swim to the blessed realm itself.  Sometimes he wondered if he could simply swim forever. 

At first he had thought it was because Ulmo, or one of his Maiar, had taken pity on him.  The transformation started off innocently enough, after all.  He began to have an unusual sensation on his chin.  Beards were very rare among the Eldar, but Círdan started to grow one, and soon the fine hairs gradually lengthened to spill down his chest in a silver waterfall.  However, the changes did not stop there. 

Círdan next felt a strange stretching sensation underneath the skin of his beard.  When he probed intently with his fingers, he found very small bumps starting to form there.  They also started to lengthen just as his hair had.

Círdan did not wonder too much about it.  After all, if beards were rare among the Eldar but still occurred, he reasoned that perhaps these horn-like protuberances were just another of his idiosyncrasies.  There was also no pain, and he felt fine.  And the fact that they were completely covered by his beard helped.

Nevertheless, his horn-like protuberances continued to develop.  Soon he realized they were a lot softer than horns, more like fingers, though much longer.  As if that weren’t enough, they also started to grow suckers along their undersides. 

Having swum in the ocean often, Círdan was familiar with squid and octopods.  He realized that these new appendages looked remarkably like their tentacles.  He had also noticed some changes in the tissue on either side of his neck.  What looked like gill slits had appeared there.  Círdan quickly took to wearing high necked robes.

All the while, he had never stopped swimming during every moment he could spare.  The water was freeing to him and he felt more at peace there than at any other time.  One day he dived down, deep underwater.  And he did not come up.  His gills worked!  He could breathe untroubled in the depths.

At first Círdan was elated, he could now spend more time in the sea he loved as though he belonged there—for he too was one of its creatures now.

Then the dreams started.

He dreamed one night that he inhabited a vast form, haunting the depths of the ocean and then gradually rising.  Due to his hugeness, he created great waves as he breached the surface and overhead storm clouds began to gather.  There was a ship nearby, and he was filled with an irrational rage at this intruder into his realm.  He stretched forward with his hands, but they were tentacles—much larger than those he had on his chin.  They encircled the ship thrice and Círdan squeezed.  The ship broke apart as easy as he might crack open a crustacean to eat it.  Thunder clapped, lightning blazed.  And Círdan awoke.

He did not speak of the dream, or his transformation, to anyone.  Círdan decided to focus more on his ship building, in part spurred by the fear of becoming a ship destroyer.  He tried to cut back on his swimming but found it extremely difficult.  He truly loved the sea.

And so he swam.  He swam far out west from the coast into the open ocean and down beneath its depths.  Hours later when he eventually surfaced, he was much changed.

His form was immense, and his rising was as the rising of a new island from the ocean floor.  The waters parted from his broad back and waves broke over his bulk.  He looked forth with huge eyes, the size almost of one of his ships.  Then he reached forth, and his countless tentacles flailed, churning the already agitated sea into an angry froth. 

He looked up and saw that the the sky had grown dark with dense storm clouds.  He looked behind him, and there he saw a ship.  A strange vessel, not one of his own.  It was a ship of the men of Númenor coming out of the west.

He felt again the irrepressible rage possess him and began to swim inexorably toward the ship.  They would try, of course, to out run him.  But they would fail.

He seized the ship in his strong grip and before he had time to consider what he was doing, he crushed it with surpassing force.  The ship was obliterated like so many slender splinters.  Slowly, with a dark hunger, he guided the wreckage toward him and opened his deadly maw.

None escaped but were consumed.

Some days later, Círdan awoke on a shore far from home.  At first he was confused as to his surroundings, then he remembered.  What a strange dream it had been.

He returned home again, and went back to his work.  It was some weeks before he ventured to swim again, still uncertain about how he had come to be so far from home.  He did not trust his memory.  The bits and pieces of what he recalled were simply too unreal to have actually occurred.

When he did swim again, another Númenorean ship went missing soon afterwards.  Círdan realized too late, upon waking up on the ship’s broken hull, that this was no terrible dream.  He had become a monster, and a monster who devoured men.

He never swam again after that.

 

Or so he told himself…

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry random Númenoreans.


End file.
